


everywhere, everything, anything

by peachyteabuck



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cats, F/M, New Asgard, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-06 01:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21218135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachyteabuck/pseuds/peachyteabuck
Summary: thor meets a cat in new asgard.





	everywhere, everything, anything

Thor meets him the day he goes to pick up his month shipment of Misgardian alcohol. There, in a house made from empty crates and discarded fishing net, lies a large cat. Freckled with dark grey patches with swirls of lighter and lighter greys, he looks at Thor with translucent green eyes. Large pupils, a swishing tail. Thor chooses not to move the animal just looking for somewhere other than the cold, muddy ground to sleep. He, in all his regality, understands the creature’s desire for such basic accommodations.

Brunnhilde notices the creature two weeks from the day Thor gives him an old towel for the feline to sleep on. She loves Thor, loves her with each cell in her fatigued body, and that is why she does not mention anything until she notices the collar, the _nameplate_ around the grey mass’s fluffy neck.

It’s red – not _blood_ red – but red like cherry-flavored beverages, like the remnants of a red velvet cupcake on a paper plate. Red of a shift worn down from time and love. Red, the cheeks of a twelve-year-old with a crush. Brun walks to the cat with narrowed eyes and a container full of ground fish.

The cat, one very happy to accept such a prized snack, does not mind when Brun moves to check the small letters indented into the shiny silver.

_Lands-maðr_

_New Asgard_

_If found, please leave me alone_

Brun snorts, and does as the nameplate tells her to.

She brings it up that night as she cooks, slicing meats and vegetables into a crockpot so it can become a meal as she and Thor sleep. It’s a mess, the counters and kitchen, but she likes it. It’s a sign of something warmer than the chill running through her veins. Thor’s there, leaning against the counter, stealing bits of vegetables and suggesting spice combinations as if he knows what he’s talking about. Brun doesn’t snap at him, though, just rolls her eyes and directs the conversation towards something else.

It’s when Thor mentions coriander that she mentions the new addition to their property. Thor, unlike before, says very little. He simply shrugs, and bites into a bit of celery.

“Showed up one day,” he says.

Brun nods. “I knew that part.”

Thor shrugs again. _Not much else to tell._

Brun doesn’t push him, just sets the timer and ushers him into their massive, messy bed. He snores as loud as usual, but in the early morning when she goes to shower the dried sweat from her nightmares she doesn’t find him dead asleep. Rather, he’s tapping away at a laptop that’d nearly been busted in a fit of anger a few weeks prior. When he abandons it for his own shower, Brun can’t help but peak at the cracked screen.

It’s some pet website. Specifically, something called a _cat tree_. Brun scoffs and rolls her eyes. Nonetheless, she finds it a little heartwarming that Thor has something to focus on besides how his literal and figurative world was blown to bits and how it may have been but also wasn’t his fault and –

Exactly twenty-three days later, she finds a weather-proof cat tree four feet to the left of the large stack of crates. The mid-afternoon sun is bright and warm, something Lands-maðr is well aware of as he lays on the highest platform in a sun beam. Brun, a woman who has worked tirelessly for everything she has, glares at the creature. Not in anger or jealousy, per se, but marvel.

Just shows up in Thor Odinson’s yard and suddenly gets to live like a king who hasn’t been displaced. Still, she can’t remain too mad when she finally runs her fingers through that beautiful, thick fur – all that warmer as it heats in the sun.

The first time Lands-maðr wades his way inside, he jumps in through a window as Brun and Thor clean the house. It’s the last warm (well, their definition of warm) day of the year, and they celebrate by opening up the house to let the fresh air in while they scrub and wipe and sweet, slow songs play in the background. Thor treats the feline’s presence as something normal, welcomes the animal as it follows him around and _brrrooowwws_ every once and awhile to force Thor’s hand to give him the attention he so deservedly wishes for. Sometimes Lands-maðr receives pieces of chicken and fish and bread for his troubles, something Brun may or may not contribute to.

For the first few hours she considers saying something, considers telling Thor to stick the cat back outside or question him about this grey mass that has decided all on his lonesome he now lived in their home with these two humans who have so humbly devoted themselves to his servitude. But, after Lands-maðr finds himself a bed in the form of a pile of fresh-out-of-the-dryer laundry and swishes that tail around as he stares at Brun while she so indignantly pulls more and more of his throne from him so she can put them away, Lands-maðr looks at her with this large, green eyes with large, round pupils and she cracks. Her heart cracks. And she decides this creature has staked enough of himself in the wood walls of their home there’s _no way_ she can kick him out.

“Fine,” she mumbles to herself. The next few words she mumbles to the cat (a fact she’s just a _little bit_ ashamed of). “But only because you make him happy.”

Lands-maðr does nothing in response.

That night forward, Lands-maðr spends each night on Thor’s massive chest, warming the man’s face and purring louder than anything Brunnhilde’s ever heard in her entire goddamn life. Lands-maðr’s good about sharing Thor, let’s Brun curl up into her lover’s side and rest her head on the small bit shoulder _not _covered in fluff. Lands-maðr also takes care not to smother Brun in her sleep, something she greatly appreciates.

Maybe she now has to share the love of her life with some other creature, but when she wakes up each morning and doesn’t feel Thor tenser than the day previous – instead feeling him calm and sated as this _cat_ warms his skin – Brun thinks giving up real estate when she cuddles Thor is worth it.

One night, Brunnhilde has to leave. Some diplomatic thing, Thor calls it. A way for New Asgard to get access to a larger variety of produce from a neighboring place that’s been growing beautiful fruit in these large greenhouses and New Asgard has been struggling to-

Either way, Thor is left by his lonesome for a little over seventy-two hours. This, before all of it, wouldn’t be a problem. He’s a grown man, he’s a grown man who can handle himself and can remember to feed himself and remember to bathe himself.

He is also a grown man who uses the woman he loves to keep the voices in his head that tell him to curl up in a ball and never leave the house. The ones that tell him to eat nothing all day because he forgets he’s a living thing that _needs to eat_, the one that makes him watch seven seasons worth of trashy television in less than a week.

He’s fine for the first day or so, but as the sun sets on night two (2) alone, every bit of medical grade steel he’s used to keep the rest of the world out disintegrates in his hands like…like…

Thor cries, cement in his ribs making it hard to breathe and heart desperately beating to keep his hands from becoming too cold. Tears, thick fat ones that rest in his beard, roll down his face like waves onto a shored ship. He makes no move to wipe them from his face.

“Am I some sort of infection?” His voice is low as the cat accepts his pitiful attempt at pets. “My skin – it remembers. It knows each piece of ruin New Asgard has built itself out of, built itself without me.” Thor sniffles again, rubbing at his face with the hoodie he’s worn every day for the past two weeks. “How am I ever to apologize to my people sufficiently? To myself?” he sniffs. “How am I to apologize to you, for bringing all these foreign people to a place such rightfully yours?”

Lands-maðr, still purring louder than two ships hitting each other during a lightning storm, simply rubs the flat of his head against Thor’s chin.

_Apology accepted_. 


End file.
